The cadre system. Party membership. Li Tongming rises from the village.
Realities of medical welfare. Transfers and separations. Political
study sessions. Adjusting to political winds. The rise and fall of the
Gang of Four. Redefining Mao Zedong Thought. Jiang Qing on trial. Graft
among cadres. Revamping the bureaucracy. Revising the role of the
Party.

The work unit. How industry is organised. Ambitions of the 'fifties to
realities of the 'eighties. State, collective and private workers. Old
Kong finds a place in the system, and worries about his children. Youth
unemployment - Shanghai protest march. Women workers and child care.
Incentive schemes - Deng shakes up the wages system. Housing problems
and commuting. Old Kong visits the bird market. Bicycles and other key
purchases. Inflation arrives in China.

The peasants in history. Chairman Mao's demands on the peasants. `Learn
from Dazhai - no, don't!'. Beggars in a restaurant. The rural
government structure. Access to urban markets. The Hong Qiao free
market. Private versus collective endeavour in the villages. The
Guangxi Lancers. Mechanisation and agribusiness. Xiao Sung's life in
the hills. Peasant prosperity and spending power. Tax evasion and other
problems of the new system. Rural cadre resistance to change. Mao
Zedong's home village. Problems with education. Population control
policies. Female infanticide.

Private enterprise in China. Small Business re-opens. Business law.
State-backed entrepreneurs. Zhao Meiling survives to carry forward the
family business. Patriotic Capitalists restored, millionaires
reimbursed. Foreign joint ventures. Privatisation of housing.
Everbright Corporation moves into Hong Kong. Silver service in the Jin
Jiang Club of Shanghai. The Ying family hope for justice. Christianity
and the Communist Party.

`Emancipate the Mind'. Mao and the intellectuals. Abuse of
intellectual resources. Fang Guiying is ostracized for her family.
Problems for brain-workers. Two decades of stagnation in the
universities. Qu the Artist at home. The intellectual class
rehabilitated. Intellectual freedom - up to a point. Art and
propaganda. Westernization. `Burns Night' in Beijing. Ying Ruocheng
dominates the stage. Party resistance to `bourgeois corruption'. State
artists. The `Stars' artists break ranks.

The battle for the orthodoxy, 1978. Wei Qi and politics. Mao's
infallibility questioned. The coup against the Gang of Four.
Wallposters as democracy. The Enlightenment Society in Tien An Men
Square. The Democracy Wall is born. A night rally with foreigners
breaches taboos. Youth dare to speak. The Party moves in.

China as a multi-national state. The minority nationalities.
Imperial ideology. The resistance of the Fragrant Concubine. Meriem
grows up as a Uighur. Soviet interests in the border regions.
Competition over Xinjiang (Turkestan). Inland treatment of minority
nationalities. The Gobi Desert and Turfan. Munever's assimilation.
Salim entertains a foreign visitor. Policy changes on culture and
religion. Kashgar, four thousand kilometres from Beijing. Al It'qa
mosque. Mullah Kasim draws the line on Communism.

China's view of Tibet. Encounters in Lhasa. Old and new policies on
absorbing Tibet. A briefing in the Potala Palace. The Tibetan Rebellion
of 1959. Contemporary racial tensions. Destruction of monasteries.
Versions of history. China woos the Dalai Lama. Withdrawal of Chinese
officials. Exiles returning. Modern pilgrimages. Folk culture recovers.
Official culture homogenizes. Local faith in the Dalai Lama. Thubten,
the emigre Lama. The absorption of Inner Mongolia. Genghis Khan has a
change of status.